Up in flames
by champagne-and-razor-blades
Summary: The flames inside her chest are consuming her, licking at her ribcage, her heart.
1. They

They are walking down 57th street, perhaps a little closer than most 'partners' would choose to walk - hips bumping, elbows nudging, shoulders brushing - but he doesn't seem to mind the closeness at all, and neither does she.

It's comfortable, actually, easy to be physically close to him. She knows that the rest of the emotional closeness will ebb back to them in time, once she rids herself completely of her walls and his. He has walls around his heart too, now, and she recognises that it's partially her fault.

Maybe they should get on to healing those wounds they've given each other sooner rather than later, she muses. It would be so easy for them to fix their jagged edges together like jigsaw puzzles; let two broken halves make a whole together.

Beckett's not ready for that. Not yet. One day. Not today.

He buys them pastries at a dusty little cafe tucked around a corner; she has a custard danish, he has a chocolate croissant and they are eating in contented harmony as they continue walking towards nowhere in particular.

Castle says something, she can't remember exactly what when she looks back on the cluster of moments before, but she guesses it was probably a bad pun.

She laughs, throwing her head back, hair cascading over her denim-clad shoulders as they skirt around a small cluster of people.

And then the world explodes.

* * *

Everything is fragmented.

They are flying.

After the inital rush of roaring sound that sweeps her off her feet and throws her away, she can't hear anything at all except for a muted pulse in her ears.

Somebody set the sky on fire.

Her eyes are seeing swirls of light at the corners of their vision, but she can't focus.

Dirty lense on a camera. That's what it's like.

_Castle._

She doesn't know who she is or where she is but he's here too

_Castle Castle Castle_

The words are meant to be spilling from her mouth, but her lungs aren't working, full of dust, constricting, so she just thinks it over and over.

Maybe if she thinks it loud enough he'll hear.

The flames around them are gnawing at the edges of her consciousness, climbing down her throat and burning in her lungs.

_Castle. Castle?_

Is she crawling or is someone moving her? She can't tell. She's disjointed._  
_

A puppet. Marionette. Strings are pulling.

None of the air she is blindly sucking in is reaching her lungs. Stupid air.

_Castle. Castle. Castle!_

The flames inside her chest are consuming her, licking at her ribcage, her heart, it burns it burns it burns-

_Castle-Castle-I-Love-You-I-Love-You-Rick-I'm-Sorry-Castle-Castle-_

Her galloping heartbeat thuds the words, and then with one more rush of pain, all she can see is black.

_Castle._

* * *

The flames around her have stopped but they're still in her lungs heart head everywhere.

Beckett, now vaguely aware that she's Beckett, tries to open her eyes.

_Shit. _Hurts.

Her vision is faded around the edges, everything swimming, but then it hurts too much and she squeezes her eyes shut again.

There is a mask clamped over her mouth, sweet chemical air, but she still can't breath right. Hurts. A lot.

_What happened?_

And then the question that matters infinitely more.

_Where's Castle?_

There is a bit of indignation left in her, enough for her to be pissed off at the fact that they have actually almost died together again. Again. Oh god. The sudden realisation hits her, bowls her over, that maybe they haven't almost died together.

Maybe one of them has.

(Maybe she will, too, because fresh waves of pain are crashing over her head.)

Shit, no, no, no, this wasn't meant to happen. They were meant to have time. So much time that they could stretch out and bask in it, enjoy each others company, let everything come slowly, gradually, naturally. She was meant to tell him when he already knew because she'd made it so clear and he could see it shining in her eyes.

Does he know? (She's not using past tense, not now, not yet.)

He had to have seen it. Once, twice, caught her feeling in the way she looked at him, in the way that her whole body softened when he brushed against her.

He had to know.

Right?

Someone's hands are touching her, plastic gloves are prodding the fire in her chest through the plastic wrap of her skin.

She curls in on herself.

It burns.

_Castle._

They - who are they? she can't open her eyes or she will combust, engulfed in flames - are moving her, every movement makes her suck in a sharp gasp of air that never really seems to reach her, and every breath feels like a match being lit against her insides.

Beckett focuses on the things she knows. Castle. She plays images like a slideshow on the insides of her eyelids.

The way he looked, walking next to her, his mouth full of a stolen bite of her pastry. He'd had a dab of custard on the corner of his bottom lip that she'd wanted to lick away with the point of her tongue. She wishes she had now. She wishes.

_Castle._

* * *

This will become a multi-chapter if anyone shows interest in it. _  
_


	2. Beckett

Beckett isn't especially sure whether's she conscious or not.

Maybe she's dreaming.

Maybe she's dreaming that even though she tries to cough out whatever's choking her lungs, her body won't respond.

Maybe she's dreaming that there is a dull pulsing of pain in her arm and across her forehead, a stronger concentration of the same kind of pain around her ribcage.

Maybe.

It feels as if her consciousness is distorted, swimming. Drowning.

_What happened? _

A stab of intensified agony ripples from her chest, and the waves pull her under again.

* * *

It's darkdarkdark, but she knows she's on fire.

Burning down.

Ashes to ashes.

_Castle._

* * *

Someone is pressing on her chest and with a jolt she's suddenly Beckett.

She opens her eyes. The ceiling is moving above her and she thinks she might be hallucinating but then she realises she's being wheeled down a hallway.

A hallway? What hallway? Where?

Beckett tries to twist around, to move, but she is pinned down and something tells her that her body wouldn't obey even if it could.

Shit, it hurts.

Shit.

The effort of lucid thinking is too much for her body. She tries to fight the tug of tiredness this time, but it's so much bigger than she is.

What if she doesn't come back up?

Needs to. Has to. Castle.

She sees his face in her head again.

She hopes he's not burning too.

God, she's tired.

* * *

Beckett is somewhere different now. She's not exactly sure where. Her hearing is still kind of screwed.

She tries to sit up, just for a second, just to see what she's- and oh god holy crap it's burning burning burning. Her heart flops in her chest like a dying butterfly; that can't be normal, doesn't feel right, she still can't breath even though there's a mask over her mouth-

Can't fight that darkness can't fight the darkness oh god help Castle Castle Castle no fighting she's going going gone.

* * *

"Another one from the bomb?"

"Yeah, she's alive, just. Nearly died twice, heart stopped once. Crapload of broken bones, a lungful of dust and she smacked her head something awful."

"Bring her in, quickly-"

"-Shit, her heart rate-"

"Quickly, quickly.."

She hears none of it.

* * *

There are little tendrils of semi-awakeness swirling in the whirlpool of her brain. She tries to latch on to them, climb out of the darkness she's sitting in.

She can't remember what happened. How it happened. Why she is on fire. She doesn't know.

Only that Rick was with her when it happened. His presence imprinted itself on her brain somehow, embedded itself in the repetitive stream of thoughts that circle her mind, over and over.

Oh, god, she hopes he isn't burning too. She can handle her pain, but his pain breaks her.

_Rick._

* * *

He wants to claw his lungs out of his chest._  
_

Red hot coals in his throat.

Sizzlingburningsmouldering.

_Beckett._


	3. Castle

Castle thinks that this is quite possibly what hell feels like.

He remembers in flashes. The boom. The seemingly slow-motion flight they took through the air, the way that he grabbed hold of Beckett. How he tried to angle his body under hers as they fell, pulled her on top of him, tried to ease the landing.

Did it work? He hopes it has. He hopes. Hopes. Because that's all he has left.

Then the second boom. The one he tried and failed to shield her from.

He fists his hand into the rough fabric underneath him and tries to stifle a whimper as a fresh stab of pain rolls from his thigh. Broken? Doesn't know. Can't hear.

He's tired. Very tired. And his head is killing him.

Sleep.

* * *

Her blood must have turned to petrol, and someone lit her on fire from the inside out.

She can't even tell how long she's been burning for.

Combusting, combusting, a shooting star, fallen angel, she is burning.

Hurts. Hurts. Mom. Dad. Castle. Help.

It hurts enough to make her consider the possibility of it killing her.

No, no, not now, not yet. They're meant to have an _always._

_And I never told him. I nevereverever told him._

There have been so many moments where she's been completely overcome with how much she loves him, where her entire body has thrilled with it, where _iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou _has been pumping through her blood, the words thrumming at her pulse points.

_Did he know? Please, please tell me he knows. Tell me he knew._

Thinking is an effort. Breathing is an effort. She tries to move one final time, orders her limbs to obey her brain, but nothing. Just nothing.

* * *

The first thing she realises when she briefly is aware of herself again is that a wonderful coolness is ebbing through her veins.

Soothing, cooling. It eases the fire and she curls in on herself as if to centralise the relief.

Mm. S'good. Like a balm.

It occurs to her that this is exactly how Castle was to her when she was hurting the most.

Oh. Castle.

Her head feels less fuzzy, more clear, and she steels herself for a few seconds before forcing her leaden eyelids to open.

Bright room. White room. That's all she can tell, because even though her head is clear, her vision isn't. It's like someone has dripped water all over the ink of her sight, let it smudge and blur around the edges.

There's a person there. Near. It's not Castle. Uniform. Blue uniform.

Not cop blue. Light blue. Nurse?

She wonders why she's in hospital for a moment, and then mentally kicks herself. Oh. Right. Yeah, that's probably why.

thinking lucidly is really difficult shes tired she kind of just wants to close her eyes justforafewminutesplease.

so tired.

* * *

Castle tries to sit up, feels the stab in his collarbone. Winces.

His vision is mostly normal. Blurry but mostly normal, and those painkillers have done him wonders. The same goes for his hearing; patchy, but at least it's _there_. His mother tuts at him, motions for him to stay lying down. Alexis' fingers are wrapped around his thumb, and it reminds him of her as a baby. Vulnerable. She looks vulnerable right now.

"I'm _fine_," he tries to reassure them, but defeats the purpose of speaking as he lapses into a coughing fit.

"Says the guy with a broken collarbone. And a fractured femur. Who breathed in lots of collapsed-building-dust. And got stuck with broken glass from said collapsed building in his-"

"That's enough, Alexis. What he means is, he's alive and talking to us."

Castle's face crumples. Oh. Beckett.

"Richard, she will be fine. She will be."

"I tried." he croaks out, rubbing a fist over one of his eyes. "I tried, but it wasn't- I couldn't- there wasn't enough **time.**

"There was nothing you could do, Dad, this wasn't either of your faults. Just wrong place, wrong time."

And it was. It had nothing to do with him being famous, nothing to do with her being a cop, nothing to do with either of them. They'd simply walked past as a terrorist had exploded himself. And that was it, but it was enough.

Beckett, Beckett, Beckett. Stay awake this time.

* * *

She claws at the fingers of consciousness with her mind, tries to grasp onto them. It's so, so tempting to slip back into the lull of painless sleep, but.. no.

No.

_No._

_I need to.  
_

_For my dad.  
_

_For my mom.  
_

_For my friends.  
_

_For **Castle.**  
_


	4. Only

Only little snippets of the conversations reach her ears. They fade in and out of frequency, as if she's an old radio that can't quite pick up signals, but the scattered words are better than the sickening pulsing of her blood in her ears.

She decides to focus on the voices, because it hurts less.

Her father, his voice slow, drawn-out, and she can't tell if he's speaking very slowly or if it's all in her head, because she can't really understand what he's saying.

_"Katie." _Her name, she hears that. Grips onto it with all the strength she has, but it's not enough, not enough to pull her out of her head and into her body.

Ryan now, and a female voice, she thinks probably Jenny.

"Please wake up." _I want to I want to I want to I want to. _But her body won't **let **her, won't obey the commands she sends to it, not even a twitch.

Lanie, Lanie, Lanie, the low lull of her voice soothing, a balm to the searing ache in her head. The words escape her, but she lets the notes wash over her, tries to guess which string she would have to pluck to play them on her guitar.

The blackness nibbles at the brittle edges of her consciousness.

_I won't sink._

She fights it off long enough to hear Esposito talking to her, his voice fuzzy in her ears. The entire sentences are too much for her brain to digest, so she picks out certain words, phrases, mulls over them, then moves on to the next.

_Why aren't they saying anything about Castle?_

She thinks maybe her heart stops them.

Realistically, they could have mentioned him, because she's kind of really out of it, but something in her protests that she'd definitely hear if any of the visitors had said his name.

Please, please, please.

But the thought is too much; she's tired, so, too, veryveryvery tired. The blackness slides to cover her, and she goes willingly.

* * *

Ryan slides his thumb over the ridges of Esposito's knuckles, squeezes his partner's hand.

The hard white plastic chairs got uncomfortable after a few hours, so they have migrated to the floor, sitting with legs out straight and backs against the wall.

Their joined hands rest on Espo's knee.

"If she doesn't wake up, it's going to kill Castle."

"She's going to wake up."

"You don't know that," he protests, quiet, his voice cracking mid-sentence because none of them know _anything._

"And anyway," Ryan continues, speaking through the clamp of his teeth on his lower lip. "It would kill all of us."

"I don't think she'd do that to Castle. Not wake up." They both know that it's a desperate clutch at hope.

"It's not like she has a choice." Ryan snaps, too harsh for the hushed room, realising as he says it that the argument is pointless. The two of them are on the same side, anyway.

Neither of the detectives say anything after that, but Esposito catches his friend's apology in the squeeze of his palm.

* * *

Alexis rolls an apple in the palm of her hand, toys with the idea of eating. It's six in the morning, after all, and as far as she knows, none of them have eaten since- she doesn't even know when. But then she remembers Beckett lying like a broken doll, the hollowness in her dad's eyes, and it makes her stomach curl.

She wants to throw up.

The hospital cafe's counter stares her down, pies and cakes, bottles of cola.

Coffee, then.

She doesn't really like coffee, especially not this coffee, but it serves to keep her awake for a few more hours before she drifts off to sleep with her head in Lanie's lap again.

What she orders, she isn't sure. Just parroting words. Meaningless.

Coffee was her dad and Detective Beckett's thing, she knows that. It makes her feel like she's stealing from them. The kind of thought that Beckett would smile at.

_Oh. Beckett._


	5. She

She drifts into consciousness, uncomfortably becoming aware of how she doesn't hurt anymore. It's not a natural lull in the pain, she realises, more like an artificial numbness pulsing thick through her blood.

Beckett shies away from it; the pain, at least, she understands.

She may not be burning anymore, but the tiredness is still pressing down on her, heavy, so heavy, like damp cotton wool wrapping her limbs her tongue her brain.

It urges her down, pushing her more than she can push back, and suddenly it's just too much. Although inside her head is a timeless, dateless eternity, if you asked her to look back on it, she would be able to describe the exact moment she surrendered to it, let it drag her under the surface. So easy. The darkness welcomes her. She curls in on herself, tucking in the probing tendrils of her mind.

Beckett feels herself fuzzing around the edges; as if her very existence is staring to fray and drift apart. Mm. No fight.

Because her whole life has been a fight, and this is so much easier.

* * *

"Shit, her heart-"

"I thought she was stable, damn it!"

"-it's dropping, dropping- get some adrenaline."

"I don't think it's going to work, maybe she-"

"No, no, no, what the hell are you doing, Kate?"

* * *

She isn't really herself anymore, and they all talk about white light, but really it's just a soft sort of nothing that is happy to envelope her.

She lets herself go, spills everything she is from her body because it's too much to hold on to.

She never considers where all of her is going.

* * *

Castle tosses in his uneasy dream, a jumble of words and sounds spinning through his mind, and for a minute he's back in the precinct, drinking coffee, and then he's in the loft, then in a parking lot he doesn't recognize, he's impossibly young playing in the sand with a woman he has only seen in photographs clipped to a murder board.

He tries to push out the flood of – memories? Are they memories? They seem like it. – out of his mind, but they are a flood and he is tiny in comparison.

Wait, wait, he sees himself, he sees _himself… _how is that possible? And it's impossible, but he does, himself signing books, and he is standing in line watching, waiting, nervous- oh.

Oh no oh god oh shit.

And now he's watching himself walking away with his ex-wife, almost jaunty, and he knows whose perspective he is in.

He knows.

He knows and it scares him.

And he thrashes, tries to wake up, but he can't move, and the images overpower him.

This is impossible this is impossible this is impossible.

(Drinking wine with Lanie in the middle of the night)

No please don't what's happening he doesn't know but at the same time he does oh god no not that not yet please

(A searing pain of a bullet through flesh, a bullet that he never took, a bullet that seared through her instead.)

(I love you, I love you Kate.)

And he does. He does. He loves her.

* * *

"Her heartbeat—"

"How is this happening? _I thought she was stable_."

"Adrenaline, adrenaline—"

* * *

Kate is sinking sinking sinking.

* * *

Castle struggles, struggles, no, please. _Kate please don't give up I'm here you can't leave me I want you I want you I want you._

(Sitting on her father's shoulders, feeling tall, feeling strong, his hands holding on to her pink-socked feet.)

_Kate, Kate, Kate, don't. I love you. I love you._

The words didn't save her the first time he said them, but he tries again anyway, as if words could pull her back from wherever she's going without him.

* * *

Ugh, I abandoned this story so badly; sorry for that. And I also apologise for the cliffhanger.


	6. No

"No no no Beckett come back don't leave me Beckett-"

He is getting desperate, trying to twitch himself awake but he can't move at all, paralysed the way she is, except he's fighting it, damn it, and he can feel her giving up with every nerve ending in his body. So he projects his thoughts, screams them into the cavern of darkness—

"Beckett, Beckett, _Kate_, no, not yet, not like this, come back, I love you

(hot open mouths slanting together again and again, a kiss that meant too much and not enough)

Castle tries to block out her memory –it _is _a memory of hers, just like all the others , he decides – because it's tainted with bittersweet despair that hurts too much to hold on to, but it overpowers him, floods his senses, and all at once he understands the purpose of the walls around her heart.

* * *

A needle plunged under her skin, a needle that she doesn't really feel because most of her is far, far away.

* * *

"Kate, Kate, pleasepleaseplease because I love you-"

* * *

A white-gloved finger squeezing the plunger as if it's the trigger of the gun that shot her so long ago…

* * *

"I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you-" and then as the force of his words increases, the flood of memories slows, slows, fades until it's as if an enormous weight lifts from where it pushes down on his body, and his heavy eyelids flicker open, blinking at the cruel white of the room. Is she- has she-? Castle pants raggedly, the air tasting foreign.

* * *

Pumping adrenaline. Iloveyouiloveyouilove you.

* * *

She is jolted back into painful awareness at approximately four fifty-seven on a Thursday evening. Something strong and fearless inside of her head claws her from the darkness and pushes her unwilling consciousness back into the light. Light. There's light.

And that is when Beckett realises that her eyes are open. Her eyelids scrape like sandpaper, rough and heavy, and her tongue feels dry and useless, but her eyes are open and she is breathing and her heart is beating. There is an echo of a desperate "I love you" fading fast in the back of her skull, a shadow of a whisper now.

She must be imagining things again, which isn't a great stretch to imagine, seeing as she's spent the past god-knows-how-long living inside her head.

"Welcome back to the land of the living, Detective Beckett," says a soft voice to her left, and she jerks her head to look, only to feel a sharp pain crawling under her skin. The movement places the speaker in her field of vision, though, and she can see it's a nurse, short, with red hair and an incredulous smile. At the quickly stifled yet still audible whimper Beckett makes, the nurse tuts.

"Take it easy, Juliet, take it easy. You're going to be very sore for a while."

"What hap- wait, Juliet?" her brain is sluggish, muddy.

The nurse doesn't answer, is too busy bustling around pouring a glass of water while she chatters to someone standing in the doorway.

"-bring her father in, is he still there? Good, good, only immediate family for the time being, I'm afraid... might see if we can't sneak Romeo himself in here later, though, the poor guy's been torturing himself."

Romeo- a guy in hospital- oh. Castle. _Castle._ Castle is alive.

Her heart thrums with it, veins singing and pulsing with the knowledge that this isn't the last chapter they have.

"Hey, Katie," Beckett hears, along with the dark thud of footsteps on the shiny floor as her dad strides towards her, strong stature such a contrast to the unshed tears that cloud his voice. She pulls her eyes up to land on his face, smiles at him even though it hurts. He bends over to splay his fingers over the line of her jaw, pressing a soft kiss to the tangled hair flopping over her forehead.

"Dad, I'm sorry, I just-"

"It's not your fault," he cuts her off, not forcefully, but firmly, and she wonders, not for the first time, exactly what set of circumstances placed them in this particular situation. "Nothing is your fault."

Her brow puckers, a line forming between her eyebrows.

"Can you... explain? What happened?"

And he tells her. He tells her everything.


	7. Yes

"Yes, I know, it sounds ridiculous after everything you've been through, but that's what happened."

Beckett wants to swear and cry and punch things all at once, because oh my god, the universe **_can't _**be serious.

It was a suicide bomb attack, her dad told her. A suicide bomber whose vest had apparently exploded too early, killing a fellow terrorist and four unlucky civilians. It had nothing to do with her job, nothing to do with Castle's fame. They were just two people in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Her father hasn't said anything like it, but she knows from the downward crinkle of his eyes that the death toll could have easily, _easily _been five, or six. She and Castle were lucky.

"How long was I out for?" Kate croaks, wanting another sip of water but not trusting her body to be able to lift the deadweight glass.

"Nine days."

"And before, just before I woke up, what was—" she trails off, because she knows the answer.

"Your heart stopped again," he whispers, as she watches him fight with the play of emotions on his face, and oh, oh, it breaks her, that she has done this to him. "You were… I thought you were stable, they all did, and then it just- god, Katie."

"I'm sorry, so sorry, I tried to—"

"It wasn't your fault," he insists again, and she swallows down the raw swell of guilt in the back of her throat, because even though it wasn't her fault that they got hurt, it was her decision to give up, her choice to stop fighting the darkness. Her fault.

"I know," Beckett lies, slumping further down in bed and wincing at the tugging pain across her ribs.

"How badly did I get hurt?"

* * *

Castle struggles with the weight of the immobiliser on his thigh, fights against the way his sling is tangled in the blankets. He can't get to his feet but he really, really has to because Beckett Beckett Beckett oh my god Beckett don't be dead don't be dead—

One leg out from under the covers.

Please be alive please be alive oh my god

His foot flat on the ground, now just move the other leg, and-

The redheaded nurse Eliza who takes care of him bustles through the door, slightly out of breath and pink in the face with her fringe sticking to her forehead.

"Mr Castle, I-"

"Beckett. Kate. Did anything…?" he wheezes, choked by both the flood of emotion and the effort of getting himself out of bed unassisted.

Eliza's jaw drops, her eyes widening as she turns to look at him, her hands stiff and open by her sides.

"That's- that's why I came to see you, how on earth did you know—"

"Is she okay?" he interrupts again, aware that he's being pushy but completely past caring.

"She woke up," the nurse says in one breath, evidently trying to tell him everything she needs to without being interrupted again.

Castle exhales, releases a breath he hadn't even realised he'd been holding into the sharp chemical air of the hospital room, his mind wiped completely blank of everything but those three words, she woke up, she-woke-up-she-woke-up. He plays them over and over in his head, a reassuring rhythm, three soothing syllables.

She woke up.

"She… when?" he knows when, it was when the flood of memories drained from his mind and left him alone, but he's not even going to _try _to explain that to her because it would probably end up with him being shifted to an entirely different kind of hospital.

"About fifteen minutes ago, her dad's in with her now."

Castle finds himself powerless to stop the smile from spreading across his face. The sheer force of the relief flooding through him is overwhelming and, apparently, contagious, because the grin that appears on Eliza's face is big enough to rival his own.

"Is she going to… go back under?"

"I'm not making any promises, Rick, but I don't think so."

His hands are clasped on his chest as if in prayer.

"So, you gonna propose to her now or what?" Eliza asks with a short laugh, dimples flashing just under her eyes.

"We're not even dating yet." She knows this, of course. He's talked to her about his not-quite-a-relationship with Kate Beckett more times than he'd ever admit to.

"Mm, 'yet' being the operative word there. Now, if you don't mind, are your mother and daughter still here? Because I think they should probably know that she's awake."

Castle flops an arm onto the table beside his bed, rummages around until his fingers are wrapped around the familiar shape of his phone.

"They left half an hour ago, and I know I'm not really meant to call people but I could just **quickly **call mother?"

The nurse took a few steps backward, a ghost of a smile still lingering on her face. "I may have gone temporarily deaf and have no idea what you just said, and I need to go run an errand now. I'll be gone for about five minutes, which is coincidentally the perfect amount of time to make a short phone call, but of course you wouldn't do that would you?"

The last few words are spoken in a rush as she trots out of the room with a bounce of tight red curls and a last enthusiastic flourish in his direction. Castle smiles even wider and dials Martha's number.

* * *

"Yes, yes, we'll be right there! No, of course, right away! I love you too, Richard."

Martha ends the call and starts a brisk pace forward from where she and Alexis are standing on a crowded footpath full of New Yorkers who all have their own lives to live. Alexis pulls at her grandmother's elbow, keeping pace.

"Grams, what is it, what happened-"

"Detective Beckett woke up." And then it's all Alexis can do not to collapse to the ground and sob in relief.

She's awake. Awake.


	8. There

There in the harshly lit hospital room, even with the cup of coffee she'd been craving for hours cradled between her fingers (courtesy of Alexis, who had come running in to see Kate with ragged breathing and wet eyes the second she was allowed in and had bought her a cup of coffee every day since), Kate Beckett was getting twitchy.

Not the kind of twitchy that sets in after hours of surviving on caffeine and not much else, because Alexis and all the nurses had insisted she have decaf or no coffee at all, but a sort of anxious anticipation. Because Castle was on the floor above hers, in a ward almost directly above her own – he was _right freaking there, _so close but so inaccessible.

Apparently, one patient in one ward wanting to see another patient in another ward wasn't exactly the most common occurrence, and with the exception of Eliza, the staff weren't especially fond of the idea. Eliza had told Beckett that Castle was being discharged next week, if everything goes to plan, but—

As much as she doesn't want to admit it to anyone else, Beckett really doesn't want to wait that long to see him. Not at all. He'd waited long enough for her to wake up, hadn't he?

Oh, god, how that must have felt for him. Oh, Castle.

Beckett closes her eyes against the frantic swell of her heartbeat under her skin, and meditates on the steadily flooding guilt through her veins. Pumping arteries, one-two, one-two, one-two.

Her heart had stopped.

One-two, one-two.

No matter how twitchy and irritated and sore she is, she is also incredibly, infinitely grateful for her resilient heart, the heart that had pushed her back into the land of the living with a string of strange thoughts and a rush of pain. Because a heartbeat meant a second chance at life, a chance to do everything she hadn't known she'd regret not doing until the very moment she'd thought they weren't an option anymore.

(she had been dying, dying without Castle and with those three words choking her.)

A second chance with Castle, because they'd almost died together too many times. Now, she wants to live with him; love with him.

* * *

Eliza rearranges her face in what she hopes is a pleading, imploring sort of expression.

"Please, Maria? Lovely, sweet, pretty Maria?"

"You know it's against policy." The older nurse replies with a firm crinkle of her perfectly shaped eyebrows.

"But—but they're so _cute—_and don't you even _try_ and deny it. Did you know that I call them Romeo and Ju-"

"Yes, yes, they're straight out of a Shakespearian tragedy, that's for sure," Maria mutters darkly, tutting in the back of her throat and half-turning away.

"Come on, Maria; if you let him come and see her, even just for a minute, then that could be the boost they need to finally get together!"

"No, I am absolutely not- wait. Wait, I thought they _were _together?"

Eliza stifles a grin; happy to have found a way to reach Maria's emotions, which are usually hidden by layer upon layer of rules and regulations.

"Nope. Well, they're sort of together but not exactly in a _relationship _relationship. Did you know they've known each other for four years – four whole years! – And they never even slept together? Not once? And he just kept waiting for her, the whole time…"

"I think that—"

"-I haven't even seen them interact in person, I'm just the nurse, but I can feel how much they love each other, and my god, Maria, the way he talks about her!"

She pauses to dramatically fan herself and wonder if maybe she's emotionally invested herself a little too much in her favourite mystery writer and his almost-but-not-quite-girlfriend.

"Maybe we-"Maria half heartedly starts to say, only to be swiftly cut off mid-sentence.

"Dunno how they coped over all those years; probably had to lock all that sexual tension in a holding cell so it wouldn't eat them alive, but—"

"He can come and see her, just for a few minutes."

"He kept giving me all these notes to pass to her, little post-its with cups of coffee drawn on them, and I thought that was just the- wait. Wait, what did you say?"

"Romeo can visit her." Conceded Maria, with an strange sort of character to her voice that suggested she was trying not to be too amused. "Only for a while, but he can."

Eliza choked a little bit, then pulled the grouchy nurse into a hug before throwing her backwards. She set off down the hall, muttering, "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?" under her breath.

* * *

Beckett shuffles the pile of notes Castle has ferried to her via Eliza in her hands like they're a deck of cards. They're nothing special, but at the same time—they mean so much. Just post-its in different colours, and shapes, too, she's noticed. Of _course _Castle can't just get normal post-its; they have to be little pink flowers and green apples and purple hearts.

She strokes along the worn edge of the one he sent her yesterday night, her thumb ruffling the thin paper. In his oh-so-familiar handwriting, it reads "Goodnight, my dear detective. Don't let these wards come between us, xoxo" and even though she _knows _it's just his way of texting her without the use of a phone, and even though she's pretty sure the "xoxo"s he never fails to sign off with are just mockeries of text language, it still made her stomach flutter.

Still does, actually.

Kate smiles and folds it in half, then in half again, as if she can trap the emotions between the folds of paper.


	9. We

_We really do get into a ridiculous number of near-death situations._

Beckett is running a brush through the tangles of her hair and musing about her and Castle's terrible timing in just about everything just as Alexis pokes her head around the door.

"Hey," she says, wincing at the pain around her ribs.

"Hi, Detective," the redhead walks straight in, not really bothering to wait for an invitation because they're kind of past that now. Kate thinks that maybe Alexis is trying to take care of her the way Castle can't right now, checking in on her to see that she's not in too much pain and that she's eating and sleeping enough.

"You look tired?"

"Little bit. It's hard to sleep in here, it's so—"

"Clinical?" Alexis supplies, lowering herself into the chair beside Beckett's bed.

"Yeah," Kate works at a knot at the end of a strand of hair, "That, and it's so completely not home."

"I know the feeling," and she _does, _because Alexis has been practically living here, so determined not to sit back and let things happen.

They lapse into silence, Alexis absently watching the motion of the brush through Beckett's hair. It's not as uncomfortable as it might have been; maybe because the bombing has, in its own sick way, evened things out in Alexis's mind. It wasn't Beckett's fault, it wasn't her dad's. Even.

"D'you mind if I-" Castle's daughter says suddenly, half-reaching for the hairbrush.

"Sure." She's already in a half-sitting position thanks to the virtues of button-controlled hospital beds, but she rolls over onto her side, handing the brush to Alexis.

Her mom used to do this, when she was little, and she still finds the sensation of someone else brushing and braiding her hair incredibly soothing.

The little things, really. The little things that will made the time pass until the day she can get out of here.

* * *

"GetupnowMrCastle!" Eliza rushes out in one breath, striding into Castle's room with her red hair a static cloud around her head. She has to grab hold of the doorframe to slow her momentum and he chuckles; she reminds him a little of his daughter, except more spontaneous and less responsible.

"Huh?

Eliza scans the room for his wheelchair, finds it in the corner and thrusts it towards the bed.

"You're allowed to see her. Get _in _before Maria changes her mind."

Castle doesn't even bother to ask what 'her' the nurse is talking about – he already knows, of course he does, there's only been one 'her' for him for a long, long time. He pushes up with his good arm, which is the right one, thank god, and shuffles sideways across the bed, sliding ungracefully into the wheelchair with a sharp exhale of excited breath.

Just his lucky, really; if he hadn't broken his stupid arm, he'd be able to use crutches, but _no. _He's stuck relying on a wheelchair for two more weeks until his arm is healed enough for crutches to be a possibility.

Still, a wheelchair at high speed is kind of fun.

Eliza is wheeling him out the door and down the corridor before he has a chance to think. Castle's becoming quite attached to the plucky little nurse who has, for some unfathomable reason, become immensely attached to the idea that he and Beckett should get together sooner rather than later.

He makes a mental not to ask her about it later, but for now- Kate Beckett is awaiting him. He's a little scared of what he might find, to be honest.

(she died in there she died in there she died in there and he hasn't seen her alive since before the explosion)

What if she's broken, broken in ways he can't repair? What if she doesn't want anything to do with him anymore?

Castle pushes the nonsensical flood of possibilities out of his mind – she'll still be his Beckett. Or, more accurately, he'll still be her Castle. Either or. Both.

Eliza pushes him into the elevator and stabs a button with the point of her index finger; the nails are painted turquoise with tiny bedazzled—what are they? He cranes his head to get a better look. Cats. Little silver glittery cat heads. She really is rather odd.

But he's not complaining; he likes odd people, they have better stories. And she has somehow convinced the unmoving emotionless boulder of a warden Maria to let him see Beckett.

_Definitely not complaining._

* * *

The elevator doors slide open half a century later – probably more like twenty seconds, but time is dragging its heels on the ground, and Castle finds himself drumming his fingertips on the arm of the chair.

Three doors left to pass, two doors left to pass, nearly there, oh my god, one door- and there.

Beckett's ward.

Eliza pushes him to the door and is about to announce his arrival to anyone listening but he holds up a finger to shush her at the sight of the scene in front of him.

Beckett curled on her side like a little shrimp, her back to the door, with a French braid in her hair. The reason behind the braid appears to be Alexis, his daughter, his beautiful beautiful daughter, who is plaiting the hair right down to the fine, wispy ends.

His daughter seems to hear their arrival, which isn't especially difficult because Eliza was kind of running and his wheelchair isn't the quietest, and she looks up, sees them.

Her face lights up, mischievous, and she wraps a rubber band around the end of the braid with an incredible speed before standing up.

Beckett raises her head and looks around, searching the half of the room she can see before slowly, painfully rolling over. Castle's heart is probably going to beat its way out of his chest and then throw itself out of the window.

He hears her intake of breath when she sees Eliza and then him, half-smiling sheepishly and not really sure where to look except for her face.

* * *

The room is filled with an incredibly pregnant silence. Eliza and Alexis are having some kind of complicated eye-contact conversation, Beckett is unable to stop staring at Castle. His eyes, his face, every bit of him – she drinks him in, drinks him in. Never going a day without seeing him again.

Eliza is eyeballing Alexis now, and Beckett sees the younger redhead nod quickly.

"Well, I think I should go to… places now, because Eliza needs help with the—"

"Stuff. You know, the stuff that I… I need help with."

"Yeah, that stuff." Alexis mutters, giving Castle and Beckett a look that could almost be described as a smirk before she slides past the wheelchair and into the hallway. Eliza shoves Castle unceremoniously into the room.

"Don't have too much fun," the nurse says in a slightly sing-song voice, before moving to follow Alexis.

And then it's just them, the two of them finally alone together in a room with minimal distractions.

Beckett swears that he can hear her heart beating; she mentally shushes it.

God, he's alive. She's alive. They're alive.


	10. Everything

Everything becomes even quieter than it was before.

Castle had thought the silence was heavy when Eliza and Alexis were still in the room, but now that they've left, the lack of words hanging over them has tripled and doubled itself, pressing down on his lungs.

All that he can think of are bizarre conversation starters.

("Hey Kate, remember that time I had a dream I was living through all your memories because you were dying and then I woke up and you really had been dying?")

So he studies Beckett's face instead of speaking, the face he'd been forced into thinking he might never see again. She's beautiful, of course – she's always been beautiful – but he can tell she's lost weight, weight she could never really afford to lose. A too-big light green hospital gown is draped over her body, the pale hue making her look even pastier. Her hair, however, looks freshly brushed and is immaculately braided; his fluttering heart warms a little at the thought of Kate and Alexis looking after each other.

Two of the bravest women in his life.

Kate is eyeing him, too, he knows she's taking in his left arm curled in the sling against his chest, the cast on his leg where there is a traitorous hairline fracture just above the patella. If she wasn't in this much pain, he'd except a snarky comment, something along the lines of "God, Castle, trust you to break the most inconvenient bones possible," but it doesn't come.

Finally, she does say something.

"Been in the wars, Rick?" she murmurs, twisting the end of her braid between her fingertips. Castle winces slightly at the rasp in her voice, and then again at the thought of her delicate little ribs snapping underneath that soft, pale skin. The thought of any part of this women breaking, really, is enough to break him too.

"Kind of; not like you. Not as bad as you." Understatement of the century. Her heart had stopped, _her heart had stopped. _Kate Beckett had died, again, and this time he hadn't even been able to hold her.

"Closer," Beckett croaks after a moment, crooking her fingers and motioning. Castle wheels himself towards her until his knees are pressed against the cool edge of her bed, cool like the concrete under his cheek before he lost consciousness, before he almost lost her again.

"You almost **died**,"Castle manages. _You **did **die, and I couldn't save you._

Beckett looks pointedly at him, beat-up Rick Castle in a wheelchair, and she doesn't need to say the "so did you" for him to hear it loud and clear. She crooks an eyebrow. He could laugh, but doesn't.

"I missed you," she admits hesitantly, soft and almost bashful as her eyes drop from his, those long, long lashes sweeping across her cheekbones the way he wishes his thumbs could.

"I missed you, too, I tried to come and see you earlier, but the nurses wouldn't let me, except for this really awesome one. She's all short and crazy, maybe you've met her? Her name's—"

"Eliza?" Beckett finishes for him, chuckling low in her throat. "Yeah, she's great."

"I'll probably be kicked out of here soon enough, anyway, but I can go home in less than a week and once I do I'll come and visit you every single day, I promise—" he knows he's babbling, but there's just _so much to say, _too much but not enough at the same time.

"Castle," she says, cutting him off with a different note in her voice that's halfway between a laugh and a sob. And then she reaches for his hand with her long cold fingers, opens a button on the front of her hospital gown with the other hand, and slides his hand inside. Over her skin and the criss-crossed bandages, and then to the left. She slides her fingers between his, a sort of reverse hand hold, and then she holds him there, pressing the skin of his palm directly over her heart.

It thrums under their touch; alive, desperate.

She says so much with that one action.

The gown she's wearing is designed for easy access (because her heart stopped her heart stopped her heart stopped) but either because of the near-death experience or the heavy dosage of drugs they've got her on, she doesn't seem to be especially bothered by it.

They sit there in limbo, counting the beats of her heart.

* * *

As it turns out, with Katherine Beckett, it's 'hello, heavy painkillers; goodbye, inhibitions' She decides to draw the line at the urge to kiss him that's coursing through her bloodstream (and also the urge to tell him she wants to kiss him, because then he'd kiss her, and now is completely not the time or the place).

Castle strokes his index finger over her bare skin, just once – she shivers and tries to pretend it's because the room they're in is chilly – and then he withdraws his hand from hers slowly, but draws her hand with him until their curled fingers rest between them on the side of her mattress. She hadn't even realised he'd been leaning forward until all of a sudden he wasn't anymore, the once-forbidden bubble of her personal space feeling empty without him.

"Move in with me," he says suddenly. If Beckett had had a mouthful of coffee, she would have choked on it rather spectacularly. Did he just say….? He **did**, and it wasn't even a question, just a statement, and what is she even going to say to that oh my god—

"I—you… huh?" she manages.

"I'm sorry," Castle begins, "It was a stupid thing to say – didn't really mean to say it out loud, actually – but you're going to need a whole lot of looking after for a few months, and so am I, and—"

"Okay." She says it before her brain has completely caught up with her.

"—it doesn't have to mean anything, not at all, just until you're a bit—wait, what?"

"I said okay, Rick. Okay as in yes, I'll move in with you." She has quite possibly gone a bit insane.

Beckett knows he doesn't know what she's implying by it; if she's honest, she doesn't either. It's going to mean something – of _course_ it's going to mean something, he's Castle and she's Beckett and they don't do empty gestures.

Oh, god, she's moving in with Castle.

Castle is _beaming _at her, that handsome face lit up like she's flicked a switch. She wants to make him smile like that again, and again. Every day. All the days. Beckett squeezes his hand tighter.

She realises how stupid they must look, the two of them battered and bruised, sitting here in a hospital room beaming at each other, but she can't bring herself to care, because he's here and she's here too and they're _alive_.

And she is going to live with him.

* * *

well, that's the end of this story :3 there might be an epilogue if anyone's interested. thanks for reading!


	11. Epilogue

**Hi everyone :) I know I said I was going to write an epilogue to this story, and it was going to be posted as the final chapter, but I started writing and it ended up as a sequel. It'll probably be at least five chapters. The easiest way I can think of doing it is posting the first chapter here as an epilogue, and the rest of the chapters will be posted separately in a story called "Burning Bright".**

* * *

Burning Bright, Chapter One:

Beckett tried not to feel useless as Lanie helped her to slide the soft blue shirt over her head. Her friend didn't seem at all bothered by it - in fact, she had insisted on not leaving her to struggle into the shirt on her own - but Beckett still really, really didn't like having to rely on other people this much. She could get herself dressed mostly on her own; pants were fine, as were bras as long as they hooked in the front, but she still had an immense amount of difficulty lifting her arms up. The second her elbows got to shoulder height, pain would blaze across her side, sometimes so sharp that she had to grit her teeth to stop a yelp from escaping.

She turned to the mirror in her bathroom, pivoting to look at one side of herself and then the other as if on autopilot. As Castle had pointed out while he was visiting her the previous day, she looked less like a ghost than she had in the days after she'd woken up, and even though she could still see the stress in the sharper jut of her cheekbones and the way her hair had lost some of its shine, Kate decided she looked almost normal now without the harsh hospital lights.

Castle had, as promised, visited her once a day since he'd been discharged; sometimes twice if he felt she needed it. Their conversations had been light-hearted, the topic of conversation carefully steered away from anything too serious. She'd been grateful for that. However, there was that one thing she'd agreed to, in a sudden, overwhelming rush of relief that he was alive...

"You look fine, Kate," Lanie said softly, tapping her finger against the handle of Beckett's suitcase. "And Castle will think you look even better than okay."

Ah. Yes. That. She'd somehow managed to agree to move in with him. Him being Castle. Castle being Rick. She was going to _live in his house. _God, it was such an awful idea, but at the time, agreeing had seemed like the right option. She decided to blame the hospital drugs. Castle probably hadn't expected her to say yes when he'd offered - or maybe he had, she didn't know. Either way, she hadn't expected _herself _to say yes.

Kate Beckett did not say yes to Richard Castle. She said, "No!" or "In your dreams," or "If you ask me _one more time_, I am going to shoot you." Anything but yes._ She did not say yes._

But she had.

So that settled it, really. She'd been discharged from hospital that morning; gone home with the help of Lanie, showered, packed a suitcase, and slipped into yoga pants that, contrary to Lanie's belief, she had **not **picked out because they made her ass look great.

"You read-y?" the M.E asked with a wiggle of her eyebrows.

"Could you not be suggestive?"

"Honey, you're moving in with a man who's wanted you for years - and don't you even try to deny that you want him right back. I am fully within my rights to be suggestive."

"I'm living there _temporarily_, because it's _convenient_!"

"Convenient for what… having sex with him?!"

Beckett shot her friend a look.

She received one right back.

* * *

Castle's cab pulled up outside the hospital; he thanked the driver and swung his legs out of the door. The hospital stretched above him, the sight of it entirely too familiar after the past weeks of visiting Kate.

His mother and Alexis had actually suggested doing what he was going to – in fact, both of them had offered to do it themselves – but he thought it was more appropriate for him to, seeing as he'd been the injured one. Still was the injured one. He looked down at his crutches, clicking along the ground. They really weren't that bad; he'd gotten used to them fairly quickly, and could move along at a speed that his daughter deemed as a hazard for public safety.

He was going to get _awesome _biceps out of this.

The route he took was one that he knew off by heart, just walk past the café by the entrance, hang a left, and then take the elevator up to the third floor (humming awkwardly under his breath as he waiting for the doors to slide open).

She could be anywhere, really – chatting to a patient, fixing someone's flowers, changing bandages – but today, he spotted her wheeling a trolley covered in plates of food down the corridor. Eliza.

"Mr. Castle?" she queried, kicking the stuck wheel of the trolley so it would turn into the room nearest to her, "Is there anything I can do for ya?"

"Actually, no, I just wanted a quick word."

"I'll be right with you."

He waited as she ducked into the ward, no doubt singing under her breath. Some of the people in this hospital might be great, he thought, but after this last visit, he didn't want to come back here for a long, long time. The endless white walls and the smell of chemicals made his palms sweat and his heart rate quicken without his permission.

"Yeah?" Eliza said, breaking his train of thought as she emerged from the ward.

"I just wanted to give you these," Castle said, leaning on one crutch to pull a bunch of flowers out of the bag hanging around his other wrist. They were freesias, purple freesias with little golden star-shaped hearts. "And say thank you."

She beamed, taking the flowers from him and pressing her nose to them, breathing them in.

"Sir, I was only doing my job."

"No, you were doing above and beyond your job. You took care of Beckett when you didn't need to, and you let me go in to see her, even though you weren't really allowed to."

Eliza flushed, her eyes staring into the distance as if she was trying to think of the right thing to say. Finally, she spoke.

"Five years ago, I had a… a friend, I suppose, although he was so much more than that. He was a cop, too. Not like your detective; he worked in narcotics. We were pretty close. I knew he'd had feeling for me for a while, but I didn't think a relationship was really what I wanted, you know? I was still studying then. I wanted to focus on that."

Castle had noticed the past tense of "I had a friend". His stomach sank.

"It got to the point when I was considering telling him how I felt, still didn't want a relationship but we were kind of in one as it was. I'd been working up the guts to say it, to just tell him… the day that I was going to tell him, he was on a drug raid. Undercover. His cover got blown, and they shot him, once in the chest and again in the head. No way could any person survive that, they told me. No way."

She wasn't crying as she spoke, although in her position, Castle thought he would have been.

"I still don't know if he knew I loved him."

"He knew," he said quietly, meeting her eyes. "If you loved him, then he knew."

Eliza said nothing for a few seconds, running her thumb over the stem of the flowers. Castle had thought there was something more to her, but he would never have guessed this. She'd reacted to a turning point in her life the way Beckett had, except instead of fighting crime because her mom was murdered, Eliza fought to fix people who were close to death, so that the people who knew them wouldn't have to feel the way she had. The way she did.

"Invite me to your wedding, hey?" she asked after a moment.

"Of course."

"Should probably be on my way, Mr. Castle. Thank you for the flowers, and… thank you."

He nodded, turning to crutch his way back down the corridor. Beckett would be at his house soon; he wanted to be there to greet her instead of subjecting her to his mother's innuendo laden comments about their relationship.


End file.
